© Francois Lenoir/ReutersGermany's Chancellor Angela Merkel
Comment: Obviously it has nothing to do with your immigration policy. Only right wing racists would ever have a problem with that. Right comrades?
"The algorithms must be made public, so that one can inform oneself as an interested citizen on questions like: what influences my behavior on the internet and that of others?" said Merkel during a media conference in Berlin on Tuesday.
Comment: What we have here is a confluence of stupid. Take a politician who doesn't understand technology, give them a microphone, and listen as they embarrass themselves with hyperbolic pronouncements and decrees.
"These algorithms, when they are not transparent, can lead to a distortion of our perception, they narrow our breadth of information."
Google uses an algorithm to decide which search results are first shown to a user, while Facebook arranges the order of the news feed, and decides to include certain posts from a user's liked pages and friends, at the expense of others. Both sites also promote links to news articles, often based on a user's own media interests.
These algorithms are at the core of the intellectual property of any social media or search website, and comprise some of the most highly-protected trade secrets in the world, potentially worth billions. No internet giant has ever revealed its inner workings.
Merkel did not specifically name Facebook, Google or Twitter, but implied that the large platforms are creating "bubbles" of self-reinforcing views, and squeezing out smaller news providers.
Comment: Hypocrite says what? The rule with politicians is: ALWAYS INVERT. What Merkel means to say is that: large platforms allow people to get a more concise summary of news from smaller providers, which is squeezing out the larger state propaganda news agencies.
"The big internet platforms, via their algorithms, have become an eye of a needle which diverse media must pass through to reach users," warned Merkel. "This is a development that we need to pay careful attention to."
Comment: See what we mean. What she is saying here is: "People shouldn't be able to choose what they want to read, we should make sure that what they read is what we (the state) wants them to read." Can't have all willy-nilly preference reading, now can we.
The internet giants themselves have argued that the so-called social media bubble is largely a myth, and that online users have a wider access to differing views than under a pre-internet model, where most news would be acquired from just a handful of newspapers and one or two TV channels.
German establishment raises 'Sword of Damocles' over social media
This is not the first attack on social media by Merkel and her Grand Coalition government, and while the German politician advocates diversity of views, she has previously accused it of perpetrating opinions that are most at odds with those of the establishment and traditional media.
Comment: Her agenda is showing.
Last month, Merkel accused AfD, the recently-established anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim party, which receives overwhelmingly negative coverage in most newspapers, of "spreading their lies" through social media, as it achieves breakthroughs in regional elections around the country.
Comment: Couldn't be because of popular support? What functioning brain buys this horsehockey? This is the same kind of thinking that leads to the belief in magical spells. What, these "right-wing" parties have learned the 14 words to magically turn anyone into a racist?
A year ago, at the height of the refugee influx into the country, Merkel, who was first elected in 2005, was caught on a hot mic personally pressing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to clamp down on anti-migrant posts during a UN session in New York.
A fortnight ago, the leader of Merkel's parliamentary CDU faction, Volker Kauder, said that social media should be fined €50,000 for failing to remove "hate speech," saying that a "Sword of Damocles" has to hang over social media. Kauder also called for warnings, similar to those on cigarette packs or before entering pornographic websites, to be given to those about to go on social media.
Justice Minister Heiko Maas - who said that there had been a 77 percent increase in hate crimes following the arrival of 900,000 asylum seekers - has given internet media companies until February next year to comply with EU directives on xenophobia and racism, or face legal action.
Comment: You see the language game? Immigrant = asylum seeker = refugee. But those words are not the same, they are all different things. Xenophobia is the fear of foreigners, and racism is the belief that certain ethnicities have inescapable inherent traits. These words are not cognates, nor are they even within the same semantic continuum. They are bombarding you with a bunch of negative words hoping they'll stick. Why? What do they want you to think? And do you really want to think it?
The stupidity in this whole case, apart from the politics involved, goes like this : "We the Germans the most superior nation on this planet, want Google's and Facebook's software, because errr, hmmm, can't make it ourselves."
That, once again, is called begging. If you can't make it yourselves, buy it from the U.S., what's the problem ? You 're short on cash , or the U.S. refuse to sell it ? You don't lack the money, if they refuse to sell it, it's their right, if you can't make it it's your problem, leave the political BS aside and may you choke on your arrogance.